Panel Questions/Comments & Answer

Questions

Why did the 2005 protests to oust Egypt's Hosni Mubarak not succeed while the 2011 did succeed. Did social media make the difference?

What role do metrics play in activism? Aren't they necessary to know what is being achieved?

How does Amnesty validate the news coming via Twitter from the middle east. What happens if these tweets are not true?

What are the implication for the nature of networks and how organisation networks with each other and with members?

Since many of the people involved in the 'Arab Spring' protests were young and had grown up with the Internet, what is the importance of this in what happened?

What does the panel think about persona management and the corruption of online debate (e.g. as raised by George Monbiot)

The assumption is that social media is distributing power, but it is also increasingly concentrating power in a few big corporations like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo. Doesn't that have a serious implication for the capacity of these channels for social change.